Jun. 30, 2011

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At 7 a.m. on Sept. 14, 2010, a truck pulling a flatbed loaded with pipe slammed on its brakes and plowed into the guardrail at the railroad crossing on U.S. 95 -- the same crossing where six people were killing in last Friday's crash -- just missing an Amtrak train. The Amtrak engineer said he sees four to five near-misses at that crossing every year. / Nevada Highway Patrol

Lawrence Valli booking photograph from the Washoe County jail

At 7 a.m. on Sept. 14, 2010, a truck pulling a flatbed loaded with pipe slammed on its brakes and plowed into the guardrail at the railroad crossing on U.S. 95 -- the same crossing where six people were killing in last Friday's crash -- just missing an Amtrak train. / Nevada Highway Patrol

9 a.m. update: Amtrak filed a lawsuit in federal court against John Davis Trucking Company claiming it was negligent in hiring a the driver who slammed into a passenger train last week, killing six and injuring dozens.

The suit, filed late Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Reno, said Amtrak has suffered more than $10 million in property damages, as well as business losses and accident-related costs.

The suit said John Davis Trucking, based in Battle Mountain, owned and operated the Peterbilt tractor-trailer combination and failed to properly train driver Lawrence Valli to drive the truck.

The company “negligently entrusted the vehicle to Valli, who it knew or should have known was incompetent and/or unqualified to operate the Peterbilt tractor-trailer combination,” the suit said.

Messages left at the trucking company office seeking comment were not immediately returned.

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Nine months before Friday’s deadly crash between a truck and an Amtrak passenger train on U.S. 95, another truck, with brakes smoking, stopped just short of slamming into an Amtrak train at that same site, but the federal agency that regulates highway-rail crossings did not know about that near miss.

Jack Rice, an Amtrak engineer piloting the train heading west at 7 a.m. Sept. 14, 2010, said it was one of four or five close calls he experiences every year at that U.S. 95 crossing.

“It’s one of the bad ones,” he said Wednesday of the intersection.

He said he spoke this week with a National Transportation Safety Board official in the area investigating Friday’s crash, which killed six people, and was told that investigators will likely recommend changes on U.S. 95 near the crossing. Officials with the NTSB could not be reached Wednesday, but have said it could take a year to release a full report on the crash.

“They haven’t made any final decisions,” Rice said. “But they’re thinking of slowing the traffic down (on U.S. 95), maybe to 40 mph near the tracks (instead of the current 70 mph).”

(Page 2 of 18)

Officials also might recommend adding flashing warning lights farther back from the crossing that would let drivers know they’re approaching a rail crossing, Rice said. The large white X painted on the road just before the crossing is useless and difficult to see, he said, especially in winter when there’s snow on the ground.

Warren Flatau, spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration, which regulates highway-rail grade crossing safety, said his agency was not aware of the September incident.

“Ensuring the safety of railroads is a top priority for the Federal Railroad Administration,” Flatau wrote in an email. “FRA routinely examines accident/incident history and reporting as part of its routine oversight of railroad regulatory compliance, and we are looking into the information provided.”

“It is premature to make a determination at this time regarding the accuracy of reported accidents,” he added.

Statistics provided by the agency showed that no accidents or incidents had been reported at that intersection during the last 20 years. The crossing has gates and red lights with bells.

Federal regulations require all railroads companies to report in writing within 30 days all “events” that occur between trains and vehicles, motorcycles, bicycles or pedestrian at a highway-rail grade crossing, according to the Federal Register.

An Amtrak spokeswoman did not immediately respond with comment.

The Nevada Highway Patrol responded to the September crash, and cited David Leroy Fyfe, 56, of Shelley, Idaho, the driver of the 2005 Kenworth truck, for “failure to use due care.”

‘Sun in his eyes’

Early that September morning, Rice, an Amtrak engineer for 40 years, was approaching the railroad crossing on U.S. 95 when he looked up to see the driver of a semi pulling a flatbed loaded with blue pipes slamming on his brakes as he headed straight toward the crossing.

Rice hit the train’s emergency brakes, he recalled Wednesday, and braced for a collision he knew would likely kill many people.

(Page 3 of 18)

But instead of smashing into the passenger cars — as happened in last Friday’s crash that killed six and injured dozens of passengers — the truck’s driver was able to steer to the right and instead plowed into a guardrail that ran next to the tracks.

“He had the sun in his eyes and when he realized what was going to happen, it was almost too late,” Rice said of driver. “He saved everybody when he went off the highway and into the dirt.”

The truck knocked down the overhead towers at the crossing and slightly damaged three passenger cars. The tower did not break the train windows, however, and no one was injured, Rice said.

But the near-miss at that railroad crossing is a common occurrence, Rice said. With a speed limit of 70 mph on the road and a lot of truck traffic between Interstate 80 and Fallon, it was only a matter of time before a major crash would occur, he said.

Among the people killed in Friday’s crash was Amtrak conductor Laurette Lee, 68, who had been with the company for more than 20 years.

In September, Lee was sitting in the same seat she sat in during Friday’s crash, and braced herself as she watched the truck approach, Rice said. On Friday, Lee likely didn’t see the truck coming because it approached from the other side of the train, Rice said.

Also killed Friday were the truck driver, 43-year-old Lawrence Valli, and train passengers Francis Knox, 58; her granddaughter, Karly, 18; both of Seward, Neb.; and Cheuy Ong, 34, of West Jordan, Utah.

The sixth deceased victim had not yet been identified as of early Wednesday evening. Two of the injured passengers remained hospitalized.

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Update at 11 a.m. Wednesday: A Washoe District judge granted today a request to preserve recordings of the truck crashing into the Amtrak train east of Reno for use by a victim of the crash who has sued the driver and trucking company.

Lawyers for Amtrak on-duty train attendant Alexandra Curtis of Evanston, Ill., filed the first lawsuit following last Friday’s crash on Tuesday, claiming the driver and trucking company were negligent.

(Page 4 of 18)

They also requested that the evidence collected from the crash be preserved.Judge Connie Steinheimer today granted the request, saying it was in the best interest of justice and fair play to maintain the recordings in good condition.

The evidence includes a video recorder and data-event recorder that was on the Amtrak train when the truck crashed into it, as well as a data-event recorder that was on the 2008 Peterbilt tractor trailer that was involved in the crash.________________12:18 p.m. update: RENO, Nev. (AP) — A judge handling the first lawsuit in a deadly Amtrak crash in Nevada issued a protective order Wednesday prohibiting the destruction or disposal of any evidence tied to last week’s fiery collision between a truck and a passenger train that left six dead at a rail crossing in the high desert.

Washoe County District Judge Connie Steinheimer approved the order requested by a Chicago-based Amtrak attendant who was among 20 people injured when the semi-trailer truck slammed into a train passenger car on U.S. Highway 95 about 70 miles east of Reno.

In her lawsuit filed on Tuesday, Alexandra Curtis of Evanston, Ill., alleges negligence on the part of truck driver Lawrence Valli, 43, and his employer, John Davis Trucking Co., saying that he ignored railroad crossing gates and warning signals.

Daniel Kotin, a Chicago-based lawyer taking the lead in the case, said Wednesday the emergency order was sought to make sure victims of the accident have a voice in the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation into the fatal crash as well as any potential related civil actions.

“Based on just a very initial look at it, it sure looks like that trucking company is awfully responsible here, whether other parties become part of this or not,” he told The Associated Press.

“We can speculate all day as to why he was traveling as fast as he was and somehow crashed into the train,” he said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “But the initial evidence is telling us that the crossing gates were down and the lights activated and the truck still plows into the fourth car of the train.”

(Page 5 of 18)

Valli, who had been driving for John Davis for only about six months, had gotten three speeding tickets in California over the last four years, and was arrested in Nevada in 2007 for skipping a court date after letting his vehicle registration expire, records revealed.

The lawsuit said Valli “carelessly failed to heed railroad warning signs” before crashing into the westbound California Zephyr headed from Chicago to the San Francisco Bay area and caused it to “explode in a ball of fire.”

Officials for John Davis Trucking said in a statement on Tuesday they were cooperating with the NTSB investigation and shared the desire to determine the cause of the crash. They did respond to telephone calls or emails from AP seeking comment on the lawsuit or judge’s order.

Bill Bradley, one of the Reno-based lawyers representing Curtis, said Wednesday’s ruling will ensure all evidence is preserved for both the federal safety investigation and civil procedures.

“Unfortunately, from past experience, sometimes crucial evidence is accidentally or in some cases intentionally destroyed,” he told AP. “We want to make darn sure everybody knows there is not just an NTSB investigation but also a state court action and the court has said not that you should, but, you must preserve the evidence.”

Curtis is seeking in excess of $10,000 in general damages and an unspecified amount for medical costs from the accident after suffering severe and permanent injuries, the complaint states. She also has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the law firm.

Kotin said that NTSB and the trucking firm have been involved in the investigation since Friday “but none of the victims has a voice or a hand in anything that is going on.”

“By getting this protective order, we hope it effectively gets us a seat at the table in whatever the investigative process is,” he said. Records show 2 more speeding tickets against trucker

Records searches by the Reno Gazette-Journal revealed Tuesday that the truck driver who plowed into an Amtrak train, killing six, had two additional speeding violations besides the four reported by the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles.

(Page 6 of 18)

Those two other tickets issued to Lawrence Valli included one for slamming his semi into the back of a Toyota Camry that had stopped on Interstate 80 in 2007 for an accident, sending a family of three to the hospital, the Gazette-Journal found.

But the speeding citations, and Valli’s other tickets for driving without insurance, without a seatbelt and talking on a cell phone, did not reach a level under Nevada law that would have allowed officials to suspend or revoke Valli’s license.

“It was apparent Mr. Valli was at least a very distracted driver if not a driver who’s conduct exhibited a disregard for the safety of others,” said Curtis Coulter, the lawyer for the Pinon family, which sued Valli and his employer, Volz Trucking Service, in 2009 for damages from the crash.

“That’s evident by the damage he did to the Pinon’s vehicle.”

A new lawsuit filed Tuesday also names Valli and the John Davis Trucking Company, claiming they were negligent for failing to heed the railway crossing gates and signals, and crashing into the Amtrak train.

On Tuesday afternoon, the Washoe County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s Office identified one more of the six crash victims as 34-year-old Cheuy Ong, of West Jordan, Utah. That leaves only one more of the six to be named.

Only two of the nine crash victims that were taken to Renown Regional Medical Center remained hospitalized Tuesday. One is in serious condition, and one in fair, the hospital said.

One of the passengers who was believed to be on the train remained unaccounted for Tuesday, according to Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari.

John Davis Trucking Company issued a statement Tuesday saying they wanted to “express their deepest condolences and sincerest sympathies” to the families and friends of people killed in the crash.

They also said they joined people across the country who mourned the death of conductor Laurette Lee and driver Valli.

“Please know that we recognize our moral and social obligation to find out how this accident happened, and we intend to cooperate with the authorities in their investigation,” the company said.

(Page 7 of 18)

JULY CRASHRosario Pinon of Reno was driving her Toyota on Interstate 80 on July 21, 2007, with her 16-year-old daughter, Brenda, and 11-year-old son, Gasper, when they slowed to for a vehicle that had crashed into the center median, kicking up dust, according to a Nevada Highway Patrol report.

Suddenly they were slammed from behind by a giant white 2007 Freightliner driven by Valli, the report said.

Valli told officials that he was driving his loaded trailer about 1 mile from Sparks Boulevard when a Chevy SUV rolled into the road and the Toyota in front of him slowed down.

“I drove over the rear of the car,” Valli said in a statement. “I tried my best to stop my truck before impact. I was going about 60 mph. After I knew what happened I stop (sic) as soon as I could and checked on the people in the car I had hit.”

While the highway patrol was citing Valli for driving too fast for conditions, the Pinon’s were taken to Renown for treatment.

Their medical bills topped $85,000 and the damage on the car came to about $18,400, court records said. Volz settled the lawsuit with the family for an undisclosed amount, Coulter said.

Reached Tuesday, Volz declined to comment on the crash, or whether they continued to employ Valli afterward.

SPEEDINGOnly four months before that crash, Valli had been stopped for speeding in Washoe County and also was cited for failing to have insurance, court records showed. He pleaded guilty, paid a $315 fine and went on his way.

The following year, Valli accrued two more speeding violations.

On July 6, 2008, he was stopped for going 64 mph in a 55 mph zone in a commercial vehicle, and for failing to yield to an emergency vehicle, according to a clerk at the Superior Court in Alturas, Calif.

He pleaded guilty to speeding, and the failure to yield count was dismissed, she said. He paid a $192 fine and was set to go.

The following month, August 2008, he was stopped at in unknown location in California and was ticketed for failing to wear a seatbelt, DMV records show.

(Page 8 of 18)

Then in September 2009, he was stopped for speeding again, said the clerk at the Superior Court in Susanville, Calif. He again was going 64 mph in a 55 mph zone, and paid a $175 fine, she said.

Two days after that, he was cited in California for driving with cell phone in hand, records show.

By May 12, 2009, Valli was speeding again, and was stopped in Fresno County, Calif., in a truck owned by Nashville, Tenn.-based Western Express. Once again he was ticketed for traveling 64 mph in a 55 mph zone, but this time he left without paying his fine, said the clerk at the Coalinga Superior Court. He still owes the court $505, she said.

His latest speeding ticket was in Alabama on Sept. 22, 2009, where he was going 11 mph to 20 mph over the limit, DMV records showed. He was convicted on March 8, 2010, records said.

NEVADA LAWAlthough Valli piled up a list of speeding tickets, they were spread out enough, or his speed was slow enough, to keep him from losing his commercial driver’s license, said Tom Jacobs, DMV spokesman.

Under Nevada law, a driver will lose a commercial license for 60 days if he or she commits “two serious violations” within a three-year period. A “serious-violation” is defined as traveling 15 mph above the speed limit or higher.

A driver’s commercial license will be taken for 120 days if he or she is issued three serious traffic violations in a three-year period, Jacobs said.

But since each of Valli’s tickets were below the 15 mph threshold, or were months apart, he retained his commercial driver’s license, and secured his job with the John Davis Trucking Company this year after leaving the Western Express job in February.

TRAIN CRASHValli was traveling “at a considerable speed” in a 70-mph zone on U.S. 95 last Friday, when he approached the train crossing, with it’s guard posts and flashing lights, National Transportation Safety Board member Earl Weener said.

NTSB investigators will be examining Valli’s truck, tires, brakes and other parts to determine his braking capacity, Weener said. They also are examining his cell phone to see if he was distracted while approaching the railroad tracks.

(Page 9 of 18)

Reno lawyer Bill Bradley, who joined a Chicago firm in filing the first lawsuit in the crash, said Valli “negligently and carelessly” failed to heed the railroad warning signs and crashed into the California Zephyr, causing it to explode “into a ball of fire.”

Amtrak train attendant Alexandra Curtis, 38, of Evanston, Ill., who was injured, filed the suit, but Bradley said he expected others to join on the complaint. The suit also said the trucking company was negligent “in the selection, hiring, supervision and retention” of their employees.

“We brought this action because in the investigation, the trucking company, Amtrak, the federal agencies are all represented, but there is nobody representing the interests and rights of the victims and their families,” Bradley said.

After reviewing the records of both the company and Valli, Chicago lawyer Dan Kotin said, “Quite simply, this driver should not have been behind the wheel of this truck.”

EARLIER STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

5 p.m. correction: In updates posted at RGJ.com, the Associated Press, relying on information from the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles, erroneously reported that truck driver Lawrence R. Valli had received speeding tickets for driving a school bus over the posted speed limit in California. Valli’s citations were received while driving a commercial vehicle and not a school bus. The Reno Gazette-Journal's Martha Bellisle did not use this information in her reports.

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4:08 p.m. update: A Reno and Chicago law firm has filed a lawsuit against the trucking company and the driver who plowed into an Amtrak passenger train, killing at least six and injuring dozens.

The suit, filed in Washoe District Court on behalf of victim Alexandra Curtis, 38, of Evanston, Ill., claims that Lawrence R. Valli and John Davis Trucking Company “were negligent in disregarding lowered crossing gates and signals and crashing into the fourth car of the Amtrak train.”

Curtis was an on-duty Amtrak train attendant when the train was hit, the lawsuit said.

(Page 10 of 18)

12:40 p.m. update: Statement from John Davis Trucking Company, Inc.:

The family of people who are John Davis Trucking wish to express their deepest condolences and sincerest sympathies to the family members and friends of those who lost their loved ones in the tragic accident of Friday, June 24. We join those around the country and the world in mourning the deaths of the conductor and the passengers of the California Zephyr and the passing of Lawrence Valli, a member of our family, who also died in this accident. We also send out our wishes to those injured in this accident for a full and speedy recovery, and you will all remain in our hearts and prayers. Please know that we recognize our moral and social obligation to find out how this accident happened, and we intend to cooperate with the authorities in their investigation. Thank you.

____________________

Update at noon Tuesday: The Washoe County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s Office has identified one more of the 6 crash victims as 34-year-old Cheuy Ong, of West Jordan, Utah.

____________________

Update at 9:23 a.m.: Only two of the nine Amtrak passengers who were taken to Renown Regional Medical Center after a semi-tractor trailer plowed into the side of the train last Friday morning remain hospitalized, officials said.

One of the critical patients has been upgraded to serious condition, and one other remains in fair condition, the hospital said. Seven others have been discharged.

Six people were killed in the crash at a crossing on Hwy. 95, about 70 miles east of Reno, and three, including the driver, have been positively identified. Nevada Highway Patrol Trooper Chuck Allen said this morning that he has not received an update on the names of the other passengers, but would release that information as soon as he hears from the Washoe County Medical Examiner's Office, which is performing the autopsies.

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Update at 9 a.m.: Robert Hill’s mind keeps returning to one image from the smoke-filled Amtrak passenger car: the elderly woman he tried, again and again, to coax down from the upper deck after he escaped the burning train.

(Page 11 of 18)

“I was telling her to jump out the window, but she never did, and she went out of sight,” said Hill, a professor from Taylorsville, Miss., who survived the horrific collision between a tractor-trailer and an Amtrak train in Nevada’s high desert. “I remember her frail arms hanging out the window. I’ll never know whether she made it out alive or not.”

About 200 passengers fled from the train — some, like, Hill, by jumping through windows — to avoid a tower of fire sparked when a big rig plowed into a double-decker car at a rural highway crossing about 70 miles east of Reno on Friday.

At least five people aboard the California-bound Amtrak were killed, as was the truck driver. Workers are picking through the blackened mix of sand, bones, and twisted metal in a grim search that may lead them to more remains.

Jim Bickley, a property manager from El Dorado Hills, Calif., was sitting in the Zephyr’s glass observation car with his wife, getting ready to cross the Sierra Nevada, when he saw orange and yellow flames licking outside the car’s windows.

“I looked up the north side and I saw smoke, and I looked down the other side and I saw flames and the side of the train ripped back like a sardine can,” said Bickley said. “People were trying to jump out of the emergency windows, and there was panic all around.”

Forensic anthropologists, law enforcement officials and federal investigators have yet to pinpoint why the trucker, Lawrence R. Valli, 43, of Winnemuca, kept bearing down in the train’s direction, even as the crossing’s flashing lights warned him it was approaching.

About 20 people were injured in the crash, pulled to safety or left to stumble out of the burning wreckage into the desert, where they walked to the nearest road. One passenger remained unaccounted for, though investigators aren’t sure whether the person was on the train at the time of impact.

On Monday, medical examiners and coroner officials from Washoe and Churchill counties tried to identify the other victims, as workers wearing hazmat suits sifted through burnt-out rail cars.

(Page 12 of 18)

Among those killed were 58-year-old Francis Knox and her adopted 18-year-old daughter, Karly Knox, of Seward, Neb., the Nevada Highway Patrol said.

The pair was en route to California to bring Karly’s cousin, Marissa, back home, said family spokesman Lowell Myers.

Karly, known to her friends as Annie, had just finished high school, and instead of throwing a graduation party, the family decided to make two trips to California to visit family, he said.

The elder Knox was described by her pastor in Nebraska as a church-going woman who was well-known in her small town and volunteered in the youth ministry, at a local community center and the Civil Air Patrol.

“She always had a smile, and was willing to help out — to do anything,” Myers said. “The wide sense of care that’s come from the community has been wonderful. Obviously, that’s going to be an ongoing need.”

Marissa Knox escaped the train with no serious injuries, Myers said.

As federal investigators probe a football-field length of skid marks seeking to explain the truck driver’s last seconds, records released Monday paint a picture of a divorced father scraping by, who despite his years as a professional driver, had a spotty driving record in multiple states.

Valli had worked for John Davis Trucking Co. in Battle Mountain for about six months, his sister said, and had earned his living driving for 10 years.

His driving record showed he had gotten four speeding tickets since 2008, including three for driving a school bus over the posted speed limit in California in a 10-month period.

National Transportation Safety Board member Earl Weener said Valli was going “at a considerable speed” in a 70 mph zone before the crash, and added that federal investigators were examining the truck’s wheels, tires and brakes for details on the exact speed and the truck’s braking capacity.

Valli’s sister, Jacquita Yu, 48, of Chino, Calif., said her brother’s life revolved around his 11-year-old daughter and described him as wonderful father who worked hard to provide for his family. Valli had filed for bankruptcy in May 2002, when he claimed he owed collectors and other companies nearly $25,000, a claim that was resolved about three months later.

(Page 13 of 18)

“I can’t believe in my heart that he wasn’t paying attention. I can’t accept that,” Yu said. “He was only halfway through his shift, and I can’t believe he would fall asleep. He’s so meticulous, and he gets his rest. My thought is there was a mechanical difficulty with the vehicle.”

NTSB investigators said the train engineer saw the truck approaching. He slammed on the emergency brakes, but the train, which was going about 78 mph in an 80-mph zone, traveled another half mile before it finally stopped. The engineer watched through his rearview mirror as the truck smashed through the crossing’s warning gates and into one of the train’s 10 cars.

The 2008 Peterbilt tractor towing two empty side dump trailers hit the train so hard it embedded itself in the rail car.

Trooper Chuck Allen said authorities would consider all factors as they investigated the cause of the accident, including fatigue, driver inattention, and drugs or alcohol, with toxicology and autopsy results due within days.

Federal investigators, who located Valli’s cell phone in the rubble and will check it and call records to see if he might have been distracted, said the driver’s professional commercial driving record “is an area we will be taking a very close look at.”

Weener said it could take up to a year to pinpoint the cause of the crash.

Members of the forensics team that helped recover victims of a deadly plane crash near Buffalo, N.Y., two years ago, will be on scene until at least Thursday, sifting through the wreckage.

“Everything is all blackened, and white and gray from the fire so it makes it very difficult to sort out the human remains from the rest,” said Dennis Dirkmaat, a forensic anthropologist from Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pa. “Rather than just pulling out bodies and trying to sort through them later, we’re trying to note where they’re located and trying to make sure we collect all the remains.”

Many of those who survived the collision are coping with recurring flashbacks.

Hill, who booked a seat on Amtrak from Ann Arbor, Mich., to the San Francisco Bay area, said he was preparing himself to board another train soon — which, despite the collision he felt, was still preferable to flying.

(Page 14 of 18)

“It was surreal and scary and disbelief that this was happening,” he said. “But I still plan to take the train back home. I realize it’s irrational, but I think I can survive a train derailment but not a plane crash.”

Update at 7:50 a.m. Tuesday: Amtrak officials now say that only one passenger who was ticketed on the train that was hit by a semi-tractor trailer last Friday is unaccounted for.

Marc Magliari, an Amtrak spokesman, also said they have new figures for the number of passengers on the train at the time of the crash. Originally they said 204 passengers were on the train. They've reset the count at 195.

Magliari said they found one person who had made a reservation but was not ticketed and did not travel.

"It is not Amtrak policy to publicly identify any of our passengers," he said in a statement. "Again, the figures we provide are not a proxy for any other processes being carried out by local, state or federal agencies."

_____________________

Man loses wife, granddaughter: Bill Knox was at home in Seward, Neb., last Friday when he got a call from his distraught granddaughter.

Marissa Knox, 16, who was returning home to California after a visit to Nebraska, had just survived a horrifying collision between her Amtrak train and a semi truck in the Nevada desert.

She had been sitting across the passenger car from her cousin and grandmother, who were escorting her home. They were gone. The place where they had been sitting was nothing but torn, charred metal.

“She was hysterical, saying she thought Fran and Annie were dead,” said Knox, 71. “She thought it was a bomb.”

Knox got on a plane quickly after Amtrak representatives confirmed a crash had occurred. He arrived in Nevada late Friday night, finding Marissa to be OK but the other two woman still missing.

“They weren’t to be found,” Knox said, recalling Saturday’s fruitless search of area hospitals by he and other family members.

(Page 15 of 18)

“We started thinking the worst. It kind of slowly crept in that they didn’t make it,” Knox said.

Sunday night, Knox learned for sure from police that the worst was true, the women’s burned remains had been identified through dental and medical records. Authorities on Monday publicly named his wife, 58-year-old Francis Knox, and their grandaughter and adopted daughter, 18-year-old Karly “Annie” Knox, as two of the six people killed during Friday’s fiery crash.

Having completed arrangements, Knox flies home to Nebraska today. He said he’s worried about the four other grandchildren, ages 10, 12, 14 and 16, that he and his wife adopted a decade ago to raise as their own children.

Today, there are still almost as many unanswered questions as there were when he arrived.

Everyone knew his wife of 30 years as Fran. She was very active in her church, but at all times, her priority was the children.

“She was the glue of our family. She had a smile that would just light up the room when she entered,” Knox said.

After adopting the grandchildren, the couple moved from San Jose, Calif., to Seward, a community of 6,400, because they felt it was a better place to raise a family away from gangs and drugs.

At 18, Annie Knox was the oldest of the adopted grandkids. She was diagnosed with cancer at age 7 but survived the disease after having a kidney removed. Annie Knox was due to start college this fall in Lincoln, Neb.

“She wanted to help kids with cancer because of what she went through,” Knox said of his granddaughter’s plans. “She was a survivor since age 7, and now, this happens.”

Now, it’s time to go home.

“I’ve got four kids back there I’ve got to take care of,” he said. “My wife really took care of everything — all the dental appointments, the doctor appointments. I’m going to have to learn to do that for my family now.”

-- By Jeff DeLong, RGJ

____________________

Monday night update: For Laurette Lee, being a train conductor was the equivalent of being the “mayor of a moving city.”

(Page 16 of 18)

The “mayor’s” responsibilities ranged from ensuring passengers were taken care of to keeping the train up to code — and few ran their town better, many familiar with her work said.

Lee, 68, was the conductor of the Amtrak train in Friday’s crash in rural Nevada, where a tractor-trailer plowed into the California Zephyr loaded with more than 200 passengers. The South Lake Tahoe resident died in the tragedy after working at Amtrak for more than 20 years.

Shayne Del Cohen, who produced a video of Lee conducting a trip from Winnemucca to Reno in September, said it was “absolutely” fitting for Lee to have died on the tracks.

“It’s always tragic when we lose somebody, but when you get to the other side, it’s much better to lose someone in an instantaneous demise when they’re doing what they love,” she said. “If I was given one word to describe her, she was a ‘railroader.’”

Lee’s family is littered with railroaders. Her great-grandfather and grandfather were also railroad men, her nephew is an Amtrak conductor, and her son is an Amtrak dispatcher, according to the Contra Costa Times.

Although her death has left many in pain, it has also left them with fond memories of her passion for railroading.

Tim Elam, who was also a conductor on the California Zephyr, paid his respects to Lee on Facebook.

“Laurette Lee lived and died for the railroad. She was a living legend,” he wrote. “In her eyes, if you weren’t a real railroader, you were only taking up space … I respected that about her. Here’s to, ‘The Queen of the Rail.’”

-- By Juan López, RGJ

______________________

Update at 7:20 p.m.: While investigators probe the safety records of the trucking company and the driver of the semitrailer that slammed into an Amtrak passenger train, the driver’s family defended him Monday, saying he would have done all he could to stop the truck and save lives if he could.

“I just know he had to have known that the truck wasn’t going to stop in a football field and he could have jumped out,” said Delone Yu of Chino, Calif., nephew of driver Lawrence Ruben Valli, 43, of Winnemucca. “I even asked my mom, well why didn’t he just jump out and she told me he’s not the type of person to run from a problem.”

(Page 17 of 18)

Valli, a driver with John Davis Trucking Company in Battle Mountain, was killed instantly after his 50,000-pound semi skidded for about 320 feet through the safety guard rails and into the train on Friday. Driving records showed that he had at least six moving violations since 2008, including four speeding tickets.

Amtrak conductor Laurette Lee, 68, also was killed, and on Monday, the Nevada Highway Patrol identified passengers Francis Knox, 58, and her 18-year-old daughter, Karly, of Seward, Neb. among the five who died on the train. The names of the other victims would be released once they’ve been identified and their families notified, Trooper Chuck Allen said.

Two passengers remain unaccounted for, Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari said. It was not clear whether the passengers left the train at an earlier stop and were not counted.

Earl Weener, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, said investigators found a cell phone near the site of Friday’s crash that they believe belonged to Valli, and it has been sent to a lab to be examined.

They want to find out whether Valli was talking on the phone or sending a text message as his truck approached the crossing on U.S. 95, about 70 miles east of Reno.

They also acquired a video from Amtrak that was taken from the front of the train as soon as the emergency brakes were applied, Weener said. The two-minute color video shows that the weather was clear, visibility was good, and there were no obstructions that would have blocked the sight of the train, he said.

It also shows that the train crossing gates were down and the horn and bells were working, he said.

Investigators met with representatives of the trucking company and will continue interviews this week, he said. The company had another fatal accident in May, Weener said, but he did not have details of what happened in that single-vehicle accident.

The trucking company was cited for seven violations since 2010, and one required the company to take the truck out of service until the problems were fixed, according to records from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

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An NTSB examination of the truck on Monday found that the tractor weighed about 20,000 pounds, and each of the trailers weighed 17,000 and 12,000 pounds respectively, Weener said. The tractor was embedded into the side of the rail car, he said, and can’t be removed.

It also showed that the truck had two fuel tanks that could hold a total of 220 gallons, he said. They don’t yet know how much fuel was in the tanks at the time of the crash.

The NTSB is expected to release a preliminary report in about 30 days, and won’t have a probable cause for about a year, he said.

Nevada Department of Motor Vehicle records show that Valli secured his commercial driver’s license in October 2009, and had multiple traffic violations.

He had surrendered his non-commerical driver’s license some time between 2002 and 2005, but it was not known why, said Tom Jacobs, DMV spokesman.

The California DMV said Valli had five convictions on his record for offenses starting in 2008. He was ticketed for speeding in a commercial vehicle in July 2008, cited for not wearing a seat belt in August 2008, stopped for speeding in September 2008 and three days later was ticketed for driving with a cell phone in his hand, according the California DMV.

He received a speeding ticket in Fresno County, Calif., on May 12, 2009, when he was traveling 64 mph in a 55 mph zone, according to the ticket. He also was cited for driving between 11 and 20 mph over the posted speed limit in Alabama in September 2009, records show

At the time of the last two tickets, Valli was working for Western Express, a Nashville-Tenn., trucking company that hires drivers to carry “general commodities” across 48 states, a spokeswoman said.

Valli started working there Jan. 7, 2009 and left on Feb. 10, 2011, the spokeswoman said. But she declined to say why he left.

Valli’s nephew, Delone Yu, said Valli has been a truck driver all his life, and had an 11-year-old daugther who “was his everything.”

“He was a very hard-working person who was determined to make a great life for his daughter,” Yu said. “We are all still in shock because none of the details have really been disclosed to the family yet and we don’t understand how it could have happened.”

Valli’s sister, Jacquita Yu, and their mother, Betty Valli, went to the crash site Monday and noted how the skid marks “kind of went to the left at the end,” Delone Yu said.

“He was a good person and loved his family,” Yu said, adding that Valli’s daughter took the news of her father’s death hard. “But my family and I keep all of the people and families involved in prayer and wish for the best in this horrible situation!”